Officials with Bellaire’s Planning and Zoning committee on Feb. 13 discussed making amendments to the Urban Village-Downtown, or UV-D zoning code to improve the city’s downtown area.

The details

Bellaire’s Development Services Director Travis Tanner said in a Feb. 20 email that the ongoing discussions with the UV-D district's amendments is looking at how the city can make the regulations work better using current trends and what the comprehensive plan—adopted and amended in 2024—has planned out.

Gary Mitchell, the city’s planning consultant, said that amendment considerations include:

• Revisiting the maximum building height requirement
• Having small-lot attached residential developments in the zoning district
• Adding building setbacks to the front of buildings to provide more greenery and wider sidewalks

Currently, the UV-D zoning code requires a minimum building height requirement of 30 feet, but an amendment eliminating that requirement has been sent to City Council for consideration, Mitchell said. UV-D zoning also currently has zero feet of setback and a maximum building height requirement of 79 feet. Tanner said there are some limited single-family and multi-family uses allowed in the district, and city officials are currently discussing whether to expand it.

Tanner said Mitchell will have draft amendments prepared for further discussion in March or April, but no public hearing had been scheduled as of Feb. 20.

The background

Bellaire created the UV-D zoning code in 2014, intended to reinforce the “small town” downtown feel desired by Bellaire residents, according to the city’s code of ordinances. The zoning district is also intended to reinforce greater pedestrian use, and give the city’s downtown area more urban characteristics such as narrower streets, wider sidewalks and availability of on-street parking.

The UV-D zoning district runs from Bellaire Boulevard to Spruce Street and South Rice Avenue to Ferris Street, and includes the H-E-B and the formerly housed Randalls grocery store, according to the city’s zoning map.

In 2023, Houston Methodist pitched for a new medical office mixed-use project to be built at the Randalls site. However, Houston Methodist pulled its plan after Bellaire residents voiced concerns that the medical office wouldn’t fit with the city’s downtown district, according to previous Community Impact reporting.

Offering input

Jaime Perkins, the planning and zoning commission chair, pointed at how Bellaire residents reacted to the proposed Houston Methodist project and said that residents just want a place to walk around and get together as a family.

“People just want a destination that they can walk to and shop and eat and hang out and get ice cream afterward,” Perkins said.

Planning and Zoning Commissioner Todd Thurber said the rules need to encourage developers to build in Bellaire, which he said isn’t happening at the moment.

“I think there’s a desire for developers to try and do something here,” Thurber said. “The rules, as they are right now, there’s no development coming in because the rules are not allowing it, it’s not economical.”

Commissioner Christine Stone said development can happen in Bellaire, with Stone pointing to the Bellaire Town Center as an example.

“I’ve always felt like it’s extremely hard for a developer to get a plan, something done in Bellaire,” Stone said. “It’s very hard and I’m not happy about that. There is one, and that’s Bellaire Town Center.”